Canadian Forestry Journal, February, 1919 



57 



assistance of the Forestry Battalions and mills 

 sent from Canada and Newfoundland. These 

 mills, with their large and rapid output, were 

 able to save a situation with which the small 

 forest mills of the Old Country could not cope. 

 Never in the whole of her history has Britain 

 received assistance more timely or more gener- 

 ous. 



Prepare for Emergency. 



The woods have held out though the toll taken 

 from them has been heavy. The British Gov- 

 ernment, alive at last to the vital importance of 

 timber as an element of national defence, has 

 taken steps to encourage replanting and to in- 

 crease the area of woodland to a point which 

 will ultimately enable the United Kingdom to 

 dispense with imports of timber for a few years 

 of emergency. Even when this programme is 

 complete, the country will be far from self- 

 supporting. The Government has now to turn 

 its attention to the larger problem of safeguard- 

 ing its supplies in time of peace. It is in view 

 of this problem that our eyes turn to the 

 Dominion. 



Russia a Doubtful Source. 



The United Kingdom imported in 1913, ap- 

 proximately 10,500,000 loads^ of timber, of 

 which nine-tenths were coniferous, at a cost of 

 £25,500,000, besides pulp and wood manufac- 

 tures to the value of £14,000,000. For several 

 years the imports had been increasing at the rate 

 of 100,000 loads a year. Russia furnished us 

 with no less than half of the total imports. By 

 increasing her supplies, she had since 1899, not 

 only made good the reduction in our imports 

 from other sources, but had kept pace with our 

 growing consumption. Is it safe to depend on 

 Russia? The forest area contained in the 

 Russian empire as it existed before the war was 

 enormous- probably as large as the forest areas 

 of Canada and the United States added to- 

 gether. Little information is available as to the 

 proportion of merchantable timber or the prob- 

 able cost of extraction, though the great rivers 

 flowing north undoubtedly offer fine opportuni- 

 ties for transport. France, Belgium, Italy, Den- 

 mark, the Netherlands and Germany are all 

 importers of timber and will have to draw on 

 Russian reserves for their increasing consump- 

 tion. Though the future of Russia looks black 

 just now, it is almost certain that the changed 

 regime will ultimately lead to development. If 

 so, its own vast population will make heavy de- 

 mands on the forests. The timber imported to 

 Britain has for many years been steadily rising 



in price and falling in quality. In the northern 

 forests, from which the bulk of it comes, the 

 growth of the trees is slow and even under good 

 management it would take many generations to 

 replace what is now being cut. All over the 

 world consumption increases by leaps and 

 bounds, except in the United States, where it 

 has for many years been extravagantly high and 

 is now coming under the control of a rising price. 

 It would be folly to suppose that our grand- 

 children will be able to obtain from Russia the 

 supplies they require. The question is whether 

 they will obtain supplies at all unless w^e make 

 timely preparation. 



What ought to be done? The k-^y to the 

 situation appears to he in Canada. Its forests 

 contain the only great reserve of coniferous 

 timber wi'hin the Empire. It is in the interest of 

 Canada and of the Empire and most of all of 

 the United Kingdom, that the forests should be 

 conserved, exploited and regenerated with the 

 utmost care and every facility provided for the 

 distribution of their produce within the Empire 

 and especially for its transport to Great Britain. 

 Few will dissent from this ideal, but agreement 

 about the means for reaching it is another 

 matter. The subject bristles with difficulties and 

 points of controversy. Fire protection alone is 

 a hard enough nut to crack. A striking lesson 

 has recently come to us from the United States. 

 The terrible fire in Minnesota, accompanied by 

 the loss of 1000 lives, following on a reduction 

 of the annual appropriation for the forest service 

 when expert opinion had demanded a large in- 

 crease, is a warning to be taken to heart. It 

 may well be impossible to prevent fires altogether 

 just as it is impossible to stamp out disease. But 

 it is certainly possible to detect and nip many 

 fires in the bud and expenditure wisely directed 

 to this object can certainly reduc". though it 

 cannot eliminate the risk of great disasters. The 

 Minnesota forest service established in 1909 had 

 already reduced the annual properly loss from 

 a million to sixty-one thousand dollars. No- 

 where has the subject of fire protection been 

 more carefully studied than in Canada. The 

 forest service has already good results to shew. 

 Its work has passed the experimental stage and 

 the time seems opportune for a great extension 

 of its activities. 



The transport problem also presents great 

 difficulties duo to the bulky character of timber 

 and the fact that the eastward traffic of coods 

 across the Atlantic already largely exceeds the 

 westward. Possibly a solution may bo found in 

 some development of rafts. 



